Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, ATV has decided to show its vintage Titanic movie, the 1953 version of the tragedy, Titanic (World, 9.30pm) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. This one takes a course somewhere between the nothing-but-the-facts approach used in A Night To Remember, which TVB screened in March, and the ludicrous but thrilling forbidden love-cum-chase movie that made James Cameron an even bigger cheese in Tinseltown. Stanwyck is very good as Julia Sturges, who is of course a first-class passenger. All the survivors in Titanic movies tend to be first-class passengers because more of them survived than other classes. Sturges is kidnapping her own children, two difficult teenagers, and taking them back to her folks in Michigan because their father, Richard, is a stuck up, spoilt, selfish high-society toff who doesn't really care about them. She lures them on board with the promise of a short trip to the United States, and Richard only just manages to get on board to try to stop them. As the ship begins to sink, the couple begin to realise there may be a way to refloat their marriage. Corny, perhaps, but a lot less so than a silly story about a wandering artist and a bored socialite. Stanwyck was apparently quite swept away by emotion during some of the more dramatic scenes involving lots of screaming and packed lifeboats. 'I looked up at the faces lining the rail left to die with the ship, and I thought of the men and women who had been through this thing,' she told one interviewer. 'We were re-creating an actual story and I burst into tears. I shook with great racking sobs and I couldn't stop.' There is a tenuous link between the fact that Ellen Degeneres is Larry King's guest today on Larry King Live (CNN, 9am, 9pm) and that ATV is showing a Titanic movie. Degeneres and Cameron, possibly the most unpredictable couple ever, will both be appearing in an episode of Mad About You. Filming that particular episode apparently left the Mad About You team drained and furious. Helen Hunt is rumoured to be difficult but Degeneres and Cameron took things to new lows. Degeneres has every reason to be a bit grumpy at the moment, however, as ABC has finally dumped her sitcom, Ellen. Last year Ellen the sitcom character and Ellen the actress both came out more or less simultaneously, and after an initial ratings boost, and lots of publicity, the sitcom began to lose viewers. So Degeneres is out of a job. 'I was fired basically because I'm gay,' is how she described it to Entertainment Weekly. The ABC executives, including the one she harangued at the show's final cast party, say it is just a matter of numbers.
